


Just As Everything's Headin' For Catastrophe

by Austennerdita2533



Series: The Fight Is All We Know [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Brienne blushes, F/M, I'm Sorry, Jaime teases...yet also doesn't, Moments of calm before the storm, My tags are so contradictory to the tone of this piece, Season 8 Battle of Winterfell, Some levity, The White Walkers are coming DUN DUN DUNNNN, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 17:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18102989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Austennerdita2533/pseuds/Austennerdita2533
Summary: The Night King arrives at the outskirts of Winterfell with his army. Jaime and Brienne are among the warriors waiting to defend and avenge the living, with the odds of triumph stacked highly against them. What words do they exchange in the moments before the battle begins? Are there any promises to be made? Held?What, if anything, shifts between them when there's a surprising incentive hanging in the balance?





	Just As Everything's Headin' For Catastrophe

**Author's Note:**

> Finally working through a block is so cathartic! 
> 
> This idea's been nagging at me since I saw the s8 trailer last week, so I had to write it down. Hopefully this isn't too terrible, y'all... 
> 
> xx Ashlee Bree

Orange air hung over them like a shroud of smoke. As did darkness, flecked in an ashy white.

With the sky a brutal purple, and the night blacker than oil despite the torchlight which burned defiantly from every post, it was easy to sense the threat. To know what dangers would spring forth from the snowdrifts soon—not to mention who.

Jaime’s head pounded at the thought.  A sinister dread curled into the fur he tightened around his shoulders. Ice kissed goosebumps against the back of his exposed neck while a sense of foreboding licked across all those sensitive places where the shadows liked to slip in and freeze. Rot. All of this a bodily reaction to the unnaturalness that was nearing on the plains beyond Winterfell. 

An undead army marched forward in the distance - _it_ _was marching -_ and with the night at its back, everything whistled and whipped from a white-black abyss; the ground crunching grotesquely beneath feet that left no tracks.

In the meantime, dragon wings could be heard flapping high above the living while direwolf growls echoed loud, then menacingly low, against the stones near the crypts. Fire crackled at the tips of archers’ bows. Steel and iron was hidden securely in sheaths and waited to clang. Strike. Slash. Scream. Warriors flanked every fragile or defenseless crevasse they could find because they were yearning to slice down this innumerable foe in beheaded verse after beheaded verse if they could, if it would keep their eyes clear of that frosty blue for one more day. One more moment. 

How long could they manage it with so many odds stacked against them? That was the question. 

Coming and coming, the enemy gathered. Hundreds of thousands of them…

_Still coming_.

The wind picked up as Jaime held his forces in position on the southern side of the fortress,swords and dragon glass at the ready. The gusts were sharp at first, then more and more cutting as they clawed red into cheeks and slashed across northern armor like a serrated knife. Their collective breath stalled in knots as a hush rocked between the trees with a chill waiting to scratch, with cold hoping to choke out the world’s remaining light with its spindled branches and rough bark torsos and ice.

When would it start, Jaime wondered? How would it all end? 

He tasted the doom this night brought with it in the clatter of his teeth, in that prickle which fired a warning into his phantom hand then slunk down his spine to sting his toes because he knew this could be it. _Oh yes, it could be_. A dance with death none of them would forget. A fight the living might not fucking win.

Quiet became bloated. Impregnable. Like a somber song that’d frozen inside of a riverbed.

Jaime’s pulse was a sour _thump thump_ in the base of his throat as he turned toward Brienne for what could turn out to be the last time, alive, and shivered. He hated how rank everything smelled. He loathed how desolate and ominously gray the clouds appeared overhead, only to feel them grow thicker and thicker the closer the dead tread.

Catching her gaze, desperate for another reprieve in case one more was all the gods would give him while they still stood shoulder-to-shoulder like this, mostly whole and unbloodied, united in a way they’d never been before, Jaime smiled in that resigned ‘ _I’m not the fighter I once was_ ’ way she hated. 

He knew she hated it because it made her mouth pinch into a stubborn frown. (A reflex if he ever saw one.) Then her hand tightened around Oathkeeper until her knuckles whitened and she stood taller. 

The shift in her stance spoke volumes. Loyalty was there, undeserved and unbidden, while resolve dragged up the rear in gentle clenches: with fear a dull, creeping thumping thing she could no longer conceal from him. Not here.

“I’ll see you when the fighting’s over, Brienne,” he said just as the first war horns sounded.

“Gods willing,” was her solemn reply.

“Oh, hang the gods,” jaw taut, Jaime’s voice was thinner than a razor’s edge, “I said I will. Don’t mistake what I meant.”

Flanking his right side, she arched a brow in his direction almost as if half in challenge and half in chastisement. “Are those words ordained truth or pure wind, ser? You know how much stock I place in oaths,” she said almost mournfully, then sighed.

“Shall I swear it? Would you prefer that of me instead?”

“I don’t…” She looked pained and puzzled. Uncertain. “Why—” she licked her chapped lips and swallowed hard, unable to hide the slight wobble of her chin. “Only a fool would say such things at a time like this, you realize?” 

Shrugging, “Best promise me a kiss quick then.”

“A…a what?” Brienne sputtered back at him. She took a step away, visibly frazzled, and almost collided into Podrick behind them until Jaime steadied her again, jerking her near enough so they could continue to whisper. Not that he cared a whit who did or did not listen. He was not ashamed of anything he said.

“A kiss, wench. Also known as the meeting of lips?”

“I know what a kiss is, thank you,” she scowled, colouring terribly.

“Good. Then you won’t need a vocabulary lesson after I ask for you to save me one. So?” he said with levity giving way to sincerity now as the walls started to breach and their muscles tensed. “Will you?”

They reached for their scabbards.

“Save—I…what?” she blanched.

“Tis a humble request, really,” Jaime replied in wry earnest, smirking. “I hope you’ll oblige.”

Tension flamed between them at that. So did silence, Brienne’s startled blush, and about a million other unresolved things.

But Jaime didn’t care about any of that so long as he could hold onto the blazing blue glimmer he found floating in her eyes at this precipice of hell—the warmth there— all the soft strength that swam in her pupil’d depths and demanded for him to defend…to attack….to live _…_ even though she hadn’t voiced it out loud yet and probably wouldn’t before the White Walkers descended. He couldn’t seem to force the right words out of his mouth, either. He knew he couldn’t. Though he sure as hell felt them.

They each seemed to suffer alike in that respect.

“To be fair, one kiss is a bargain price for a man like me.”

Unimpressed, Brienne huffed. “And why’s that?”

Deflecting, “Call it an incentive for after the war is won,” Jaime said with a wave of his golden hand. “You wouldn’t deny me that, surely?” 

His expression was teasing and hopeful, perhaps even a little curious and intense in the seconds before he plunged Widow’s Wail into its first wight scout. The thing shattered like glass with a single thrust.

Though Brienne had already turned away to disband of some ice spiders herself, the bastards scuttling up over the castle walls like a herd of insects the size of horses, she seemed disinclined to answer him regardless, the side of her face flushing a deep red. The stiff set of her shoulders coupled with the cock of her head implied she took his words as no more than a jest. A cruel jape. 

With her being as stubborn and as skeptical as all seven hells, of course she didn’t believe him. What the hell did he expect?

“Upon my honor as a Lannister, I fully intend to collect that kiss, you know. I vow it,” Jaime added over his shoulder. 

His tone was frank and serious as their eyes locked over the fray again. It was a brief interlude before everything broke into chaos and the seconds that followed either would need to be won with courage, or lost with sacrifice.

“In that case, I suggest you put your sword where your mouth is, ser.” At that, Brienne severed a wight in half at her feet when it clamored over the battlements and tried to lunge between them. “Show me you mean it,” she said.

“Fight…” Her lips half smiled down at him as her sword arm swung out in defense. “Deflect…” Her eyes shined fiercely and luminously despite the blizzard of embers thickening around them. The screeching started to grow so loud it would’ve been a blessing to be deaf. “Protect…” 

An urgency sprang into Brienne’s blows against the wights then, in her kicks amid all that swirling madness and blood, with the blade she wielded glowing like a talisman between them so as to keep the other from falling straight into winter’s stilled doom. Until that moment, she never looked more like a knight. She never moved so smooth or so quick.

“Best them all, Jaime. Best them until dawn crests,” she commanded harder than a punch to the gut, the plea in her voice puncturing the night. “ _Live._ ” 

So he did.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts? Comments are lovely, and thanks so much for reading!


End file.
